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An atmosphere of feeling of anticipation. I can see the frosty air coming from my rivals as they do the "starting line" wiggle on the start line.

A rapid movement of the hips.

I'm at my local 5km community parkrun and I'm serious. It's almost time...

Wait a second. I need to start my device. The same goes for the runner alongside me.

The person waiting tuts. I won't start until… done! Signal acquired, away I go.

In the mele, it's hard to see a arm without a fitness tracker on it. And it's not just us participants who rely on them.

It's a booming, multi-billion dollar market. Companies like Garmin are prevalent, all offering an extensive range of different devices to suit a spectrum of lifestyles. According to how high tech the model you choose, prices can range from a hundred pounds to thousands of pounds.

"I find it infuriating, I can't relax."

"It provides solace… It feels like a friend guiding me."

"Please don't notify me I've had a bad night's sleep."

A small sample of the reactions I've received from fellow smartwatch wearers when I inquire what they feel about theirs.

The Monitoring Conundrum

My current opinion on mine? Right now, annoying. It's reporting I'm off pace, leading me to doubt whether the foliage I'm running below are disrupting my location tracking.

Millions of us strap these compact gadgets onto our wrists and wear them all day and night, seemingly comfortable with the fact they're continuously monitoring us.

A distant memory are the days when we used them exclusively to give us an idea of our daily steps. Now, they can analyse our sleep quality, heart rate, glucose levels, our recovery score.

It's difficult to find a health indicator they don't track.

But are they able to do what they claim to do? And are the data points we obsess over a true reflection of the truth? Do they boost our daily wellness, or do the avalanche of measurements and cheerleading alerts just add to our sense of overwhelm?

A Love-Hate Relationship

"I find myself getting a quite fixated with mine," one user confesses.

While she appreciates how her device monitors her runs, she finds some of its other functions "daunting" at times - a feeling that became apparent during a significant period.

Until she found out she could adjust the settings, her smartwatch kept telling her she was being insufficiently energetic enough. In a new phase, the watch frequently reports her she's had a restless night.

"I am caring for a young baby, there's no point to be told I've not slept," she says. "I'm acutely aware all too clearly."

Is it not possible to just stop wearing it?

"I could, I suppose, but I have this push-pull dynamic with it," she explains. "I value it for its fitness insights, I sometimes question whether the additional features it can now do is perhaps overkill for me."

Inside the Device

Each model of smartwatch has its own proprietary way of monitoring your vitals and analysing your data, but the most use optical sensors on the underside of the watch.

They typically shine minute LED lights onto your wrist which can monitor capillary action, recording your pulse rate. Higher-end devices measure changes in the skin conductance that passes over the skin to get an idea of your nervous system activity.

The Professional Viewpoint

One expert says that overall for smartwatches, it's a "fine balance" - while the continuously improving tech could realistically prevent illness, "detecting disease before we notice anything", it could also turn us the tracked into the "concerned but fine".

He points out that newer wearables can carry out tests like electrocardiograms (ECGs), which regularly monitor how healthy the heart is. They can alert if someone is experiencing atrial fibrillation (AF), where there is abnormal impulses in the heart causing an uneven pulse.

This does not necessarily indicate someone is on the verge of a heart attack, but it can give an advance notice they might be more susceptible of a blood clot in the long term.

But how to make sense of these figures is not straightforward. The expert worries that as additional features are incorporated, people may find it hard to fully understand their data.

"I'm not entirely convinced that the ability to monitor so many metrics is such a good idea," he says.

A professor studying wearable tech echoes this sentiment. Research into the influence of wearable tech on a cohort of cardiovascular patients suggested a noticeable percentage of those who were given devices to monitor their heart health experienced increased anxiety and were "had a higher tendency to use healthcare resources".

She identified a vicious circle with her patients - they saw a concerning reading on their watch. They became worried. Their BPM rose. They got even more concerned. They re-examined the data, and their reading increased again.

"If we see numbers about ourselves that we can't properly interpret then, naturally, we are going to seek clarification," the psychologist says. "We monitor, we check again - it becomes a feedback loop."